Voice servers, voice gateways and interactive voice response (IVR) have existed for many years. In recent years, the establishment of voice extensible markup language (VoiceXML) and speech application language tags (SALT) allow for web-based applications and information to be distributed via voice to landline telephones, cellular telephones or to other devices. This has allowed the availability of web-centric information by landline telephones, cellular telephones phones, PDA's and personal computers.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging of goods is well-known. The Electronic Product Code™ (EPC) proposed by EPC Global is the next generation of product identification. The EPC is a simple, compact “license plate” that uniquely identifies objects (items, cases, pallets, locations, etc.) in the supply chain. Essentially, the EPC is a number designed to uniquely identify a specific item in the supply chain. The EPC number sits on a tag comprised of a silicon chip and an antenna, which is attached to an item. Using RFID, a tag “communicates” its number to a reader. The reader then passes the number to a computer or local application system, known as the Object Name Service (ONS). ONS tells the computer systems where to locate information on the internet about the object carrying an EPC, such as when the item was produced. EPC's vision is sometimes referred to as the “Internet of Things”. EPC leverages the benefits of RFID's non-line-of-sight reading, large data capacity and anti-theft/anti-counterfeiting features. The EPC is the only information stored on the RFID tag's microchip. This keeps the cost of the tag down and provides flexibility, since an infinite amount of dynamic data can be associated with the serial number in the database.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,877,658, entitled Apparatus and Method for Information Challenged Persons to Determine Information Regarding Pharmaceutical Container Labels, provides a system in which combines a tag and a device with text information stored on the tag. This type of system relates to on-board, text-to-speech generation only rather than speech generated by a remote server.
Other patents of interest are U.S. Pat. No. 5,917,174 entitled Device for Assisting the Visually Impaired in Product Recognition and Related Methods; U.S. Pat. No. 6,335,927 entitled Method and Apparatus for Accessing and Interacting an Internet Web Page Using a Telecommunications Device; U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,132 entitled Voice Interface for Electronic Documents; U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,822 entitled Web-Based Voice Response (IVR); U.S. Pat. No. 6,606,374 entitled System and Method for Recording and Playing Audio Descriptions; U.S. Pat. No. 6,606,611 entitled System and Method for Audio-only Internet Browsing Using a Standard Telephone; U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,123 entitled Method and System for Performing Speech Recognition for an Internet Appliance Using a Remotely Located Speech Recognition Application; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,895,084 entitled System and Method for Generating Voice Pages with Included Audio Files for Use in a Voice Page Delivery System.